ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 81 



nests on the Green Islands in Casco Bay. That Mr. Brown was not the first 

 person to find it breeding even on the Green Islands would not be a fact 

 of sulficient moment to call for correction did not his statement suggest 

 the quite important error implied : that it is not known, and has not been 

 known, to breed elsewhere on the coast of Maine. That this Petrel breeds 

 along the greater part of the coast of Maine has been known as a fact for 

 many years. Whether Casco Bay is its most western point remains to be 

 ascertained. 



In June, 1850, I made several weeks' explorations in the neighbor- 

 hood of Eastport, and found this bird breeding in all the Grand Menan 

 group — which geographically, if not politically, are part of the Maine 

 coast — on the island of Eastport itself, and on a small island between 

 Eastport and Machias. An account w\as published (Bost. Jour. Nat. 

 Hist., Vol, VI, p. 297). On the following year, in company with Dr. 

 H. R. Storer, I continued these explorations, and ascertained that this 

 species breeds abundantly on every suitable island as far west as Mt. 

 Desert. Several years afterwards, in the summer of 1855, and again in 

 1856, in company with Dr. Dixon, of Damariscotta, we traced their breed- 

 ing, in considerable numbers, as far west as Round Pond harbor, in Bris- 

 tol, and in the Damariscove Islands, in the ocean, not far from the mouth 

 of the Kennebec. In 1873, on Peakes Island, I saw specimens of the eggs 

 and birds taken by Messrs. Franklin Benner and Spencer Baird Biddle in 

 Casco Bay the same summer. On the strength of these observations, made 

 by others as well as myself, in my Catalogue of the Birds of New Eng- 

 land (Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., Vol XVII, p. 450), I spoke of this 

 Petrel as a summer resident on the coast of Maine. I have by me, in 

 MS., the letters of both these gentlemen in regard to their observations. 

 I subjoin a brief extract from the notes of Mr. Benner : — 



" The first visit was made to Junk-of-Pork Island, about three miles 

 northeast of Peakes, in Casco Bay, on July 16, .1873. The island has an 

 area of half an acre at low water, and in the centre is an almost perpen- 

 dicular piece of rock about forty feet in diameter and nearly twenty-five 

 feet high. A dozen or more burrows of this Petrel, each with their single 

 egg, were found in the earth that had accumulated on the top of this rock. 

 The eggs were about half incubated. In two nests young were found only 

 a day or two old. One of the parent birds was found in each burrow, and 

 in one instance both. 



" On the 22d of the same month I visited White Bull Island, located 

 twelve miles farther to the eastward, and comprising a much larger extent 

 of surface than the first. Here were also found the nests of the Petrel 

 among many of the Terns. Young birds were found in many of them, and 

 some eggs." 



He speaks of having found them " abundant," and probably breeding in 

 several other " of the many barren islands in the neighborhood." — T. M. 

 Brewee, Boston, Mass. 



